Tegene Kunbi

Tegene Kunbi

The abstract paintings by Tegene Kunbi develop their full power out of the tension between plan geometric forms and a complex structure in depth. Layer over layer the intensive color stripes bear witness to the artistic process of Kunbi: The previous pictorial moment is almost completely covered by a new layer, but does not lose its presence by shimmering through the following color stripe, in a symbiotic mixture with the new shade or as a haptic event at the edge of the plane. With the opportunity to reconstruct this processuality the paintings offer an insight to their narrative and temporary composition.

Painting for Tegene Kunbi is a representation of an inner dialogue, a fight between structure and artistic fervor, which ends in a productive dilemma. His African origins and the subsequent absorbed esthetic impressions are also to be named as important inspirational sources, as is his perennial stay in Germany. These two worlds, which are almost in polar opposition to each other, meet in Kunbi’s oeuvre in the landscape theme. The colors in the painted space align themselves like planted fields and give it structure. This order and the sense of harmony that stems from it, this wanted sense of harmony, is the origin of the inherent strife within the artist himself. The need to be free links itself to this part of the artistic framework that expresses itself in a spontaneous moment of artistic passion. Structures are strongly and confidently broken to be, in the end, put back together. The pictorial dialog lays itself layer upon layer over the canvas, giving the image a certain depth that contradicts the original effect of the pictorial elements on the surface – all in the sense of the productive dilemma.